without thinking i go back and introduced myself and i say senator thurmond i name is joe crespino and i would be happy to help you get to your next flight. he said are you sure you have enough time? i want to delay you. i said no sir, have plenty of time. so i picked up his bag and we walked together for about 10 minutes. i was just trying to make conversation with strom thurmond so i told him about all the people i had met that summer and he said nice things about the various colleagues that i had met in that kind of thing. i told them i was on my way -- ahead a girlfriend from florence south carolina and i said some silly comment about south carolina girls, i guess because it was the kind of smalltalk one made with strom thurmond. i got into his flight hanushek his hand again and that was it. but i thought about that story a lot as i have written this book because the story really is a metaphor for the difficulty i had in writing about or the challenge that i faced in writing about this very controversial figure. you know there is no easy or straightforward way to write about a figu